This morning I’m thinking about the text and in particular the last phrase — that the world will be under a strong delusion. One wonders what that will be, but in this age it is fairly easy to see how this works. This is Elspeth, who tells stories, but the stories have a point.

Almost every wife I have encountered outside of the Internet who approaches wifehood with an idealistic doggedness of faith that she can be what God requires is either very young-under 30- or very old- over 80. Either she hasn’t lived very much or she’s lived enough to gain some wisdom.

Women in my age bracket (between 30-60) seem to be the hardest nuts to crack. We are generally so thoroughly corrupted by the theological, cultural, emotional, and educational spirit of this age that we find it impossible to embrace radical submission or lifelong marriage even if it includes suffering. Especially if it includes suffering.

Anyway this woman, whom I’ll call Lisa, offered her testimony of what God has done in her concerning faithfulness:

promised my children (verbally) that I will always honor my commitment to their father, and that I will never leave him and that they never have to worry about my doing so. Not only will I honor our covenant, but I will honor him as the head of this family where God has placed him.

Wow! I often wonder about my daughters finding worthy husbands, but when she finished I prayed from my heart that her sons (all she has are sons, and several) would be able to find worthy wives.

Well, yes. The trouble is that we have not had education not training for at least two generations. I’m fortunate: when I was going through school (high school in the 1970s) there were still some older teachers, approaching retirement, who had an old-fashioned education (in the days when getting a BA in NZ was a significant achievement). They taught me Latin and Logic. (And in those days, schools in the poorest suburbs required all academically gifted streams took a language). This allowed me to be able to decode the Poets from the Victorian and Regency times, and read Shakespeare without a crib telling me what he was referring to.

And there were still the pre war missionaries in ministry training young men in righteousness. This took in part: I am no where near the man of God as my father, or the generation before him.

But the modern church has lost this, and without a maturity in Christ, and a wisdom in Christ, we can be so easily drawn into error.

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

(2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 ESV)

What shall we do? For the nomenklatura want to regulate our lives, tame our religion, and remove the power of everything but a worship of their caste and their pet, the state.

The answer is simple. We are to obey. And in doing so we need to make sure that we do not trample the Spirit of God, or harden that which should be gentle. Lori commented on Elspeth, as one women who mentors to another…

Yes, it’s not easy mentoring young women today unless they have soft, teachable hearts. They’re a joy to mentor and the progress in their lives is amazing. Too many Christian women have been influenced by the feminist movement but all we can do is keep reasoning with them by presenting the Truth and testimonies to it’s powerful work in marriages.

If Satan can get us with a weak delusion, he will do so. At the time of the end the rulers of this world will be tyrants and beyond the law. (The fact that this has never worked in the modern era, from the Stuart Kings to the Soviet Empire, is lost to them, for they have not the languages nor the humility to learn from history).

We need, those of us who have been hardened by dealing with this world, to discover or find again a heart that is gentle and teachable. (Men and women). But we also need to be wise to the ways of this world. The current elite are rotten. Do not be them, and do not be like them.